That the faculty of judgement is rooted in taste is a Kantian notion taken up by Hannah Arendt. Judgement is the necessary precursor to engagement with the polis " because judgement is what allows thought to leave its solipsism behind and partake in the "enlarged mentality" and "common sense" necessary to pursue the "good" of the plurality ."[1] Leaving aside (for a moment) the questions that arise regarding the common-ground of "common sense" and take instead the notion of taste: what one (or many-as-one, a crowd for instance) takes in(side) and also emits, as substance, as action, as force.

Certain fish are considered with reverent attention in the culinary and literary traditions of Japan. The Ayu (sweetfish) for example, is a pink fleshed river fish that feeds on weed and lichen. Ayu is territorial, the male claims a single rock as his own — taking for itself a much larger area than it actually needs to survive. According to Iron Chef the Ayu is a fish of prophecy.[3]
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Judgement itself is premised on higher values, that pre-exist all time. Deleuze writes that "existence and judgement seem to be opposed on five points: cruelty versus infinite torture, sleep or intoxication versus the dream; vitality versus organization, the will to power versus a will to dominate, combat versus war. What disturbed us was that in renouncing judgement we had the impression of depriving ourselves of any means of distinguishing between existing beings, between modes of existence, as if everything where now of equal value . Judgement prevents the emergence of any new mode of existence."[2] New forms of existence (life) arrive as matters of will, and as accidents. The former are more morally disturbing than the ethics of the latter.

[1] Julia Kristeva, Hannah Arendt(New York: Columbia UP, 2001) 181
[2] Gilles Deleuze, Essays Critical and Clinical (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1997), "To Have Done with Judgement": 134-135
[3] Iron Chef is a TV cooking show produced in Japan and adapted for North American TV and screened here in Australia during 2003-2004.